Page 116 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Chinese Art

A CLASSIC FROM THE YONGLE PERIOD
This elegant vessel, superbly potted and
masterfully painted, represents one of those
classic Yongle styles, which the world over have
become identified with China’s blue and white
porcelain per se. In brilliant shades of cobalt
blue six sprays of fruits – peach, pomegranate,
crabapple, lychee, loquat and longan – are
carefully arranged to accentuate the attractive
silhouette of the body. A pleasure for the eyes
and a delight to the touch, the present piece
belongs to a small group of vessels made in the
early Ming dynasty (1368-1644), to be prized for
centuries.
Vessels with gracefully rounded shoulders
and dainty mouths such as the present piece
first appeared in the Tang dynasty (618-907)
and gained in popularity since the Song period
(960-1279). Although originally made as wine
containers, vessels of this elegant shape are
called meiping or ‘prunus vase’, reflecting a
change of function in the later dynasties. In the
Yuan (1279-1368) and Ming dynasties, meiping
were probably still used primarily as wine vessels,
but also began to hold flowers. A court painting of
cats at play, attributed to the late Ming dynasty,
illustrates a pair of meiping on a table, containing scrolls popular in earlier periods, separate sprays
twigs of coral and flanking a purple lobed vase
which appears to be a piece of Jun ware (fig.
1, Gugong shuhua tulu/Illustrated Catalog of
Painting and Calligraphy in the National Palace
Museum, National Palace Museum, Taipei, 1989,
vol. 3, p. 119).
Meiping were also placed in royal and aristocratic
tombs in the Ming dynasty, suggesting that
they served an important ritual function. See an
underglaze-red covered meiping of the Hongwu
period (1368-1398), excavated from the tomb of
Princess Ancheng (1384-1443), daughter of the
Yongle Emperor (r. 1403-1424), and her husband
(d. 1430) in Jiangsu, illustrated in Fujioka Ryoichi Meiping of similar form were made specifically for
& Hasebe Gakuji, eds, Sekai tōji zenshū/Ceramic
Art of the World, vol. XIV: Min/Ming Dynasty,
Tokyo, 1976, col. pl. 140, together with a Yongle
period underglaze-blue covered example painted
with peach blossoms and bamboo, unearthed
114 SOTHEBY’S 蘇富比
from the tomb of Zhu Youyun, Prince Jing of Yong
(1481-1507), son of the Chenghua Emperor (r.
1465-1487), in Shijingshan district, Beijing, pl. 141. 2014, pl. 79. Another Yongle white meiping with
In west and central Asia, meiping vessels
appear to have been used as vases: see a detail
of Tahmina Comes into Rustam’s Chamber,
an illustrated folio dated to circa 1434 from a
manuscript of the Shahnama of Firdawsi in the
collection of the Harvard Art Museums, depicting
a pair of blue and white dragon-decorated
meiping holding red flowers, included in Pleasingly
Pure and Lustrous: Porcelains from the Yongle
Reign of the Ming Dynasty. Guidebook, National
Palace Museum, Taipei, 2017, p. 51.
In the early Ming dynasty, kiln production was
supervised by the court, which was responsible
for dingduo yangzhi, ‘authorising the types’
of ceramics to be made. In the Yongle period,
Jingdezhen kilns saw an unprecedented
refinement of materials and craftsmanship and
produced a range of outstanding and graceful
wares, such as meiping vessels of various
sizes with voluptuous silhouettes of elegant
proportions. In contrast to the dense, continuous
began to appear on blue and white wares such as
the present meiping, leaving much of the white
space unfilled and radiating an aura of tranquility
and purity, which is quintessential of the period.
Although one of the innovations during the
Yongle period was the addition of reign marks,
most Yongle vessels remained unmarked. While
meiping have been excavated from the Yongle
stratum at Jingdezhen, apparently no sherds
of this pattern have yet been found. As a result,
some of these vessels have been attributed to the
Xuande reign (1426-1435) by some scholars.
the court during the Yongle period. For example,
a pair of Yongle sweet-white glazed meiping with
covers from the Ataka collection are inscribed
in underglaze blue with the characters neifu or
‘imperial household’, suggesting these vessels
were made by order of the court; see The Beauty
of Asian Ceramics: From the Collection of The
Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, Osaka,
the characters neifu in blue but without a cover,
originally from the Qing court collection and
now in the Palace Museum, Taipei, was recently
exhibited in Pleasingly Pure and Lustrous, op.cit.,
p. 19 (fig. 2).
Several examples, originally from the Qing court
collection, are preserved in the Palace Museums
in Beijing and Taipei; see one in Beijing, illustrated
in Zhongguo taoci quanji [Complete series on
Chinese ceramics], Shanghai, 1999-2000, vol.
12, pl. 12; another in Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong
Bowuyuan cang gu taoci ciliao xuancui [Selection
of ancient ceramic material from the Palace
Museum], Beijing 2005, vol. 1, pl. 85; and a third,
attributed to the Xuande period, published in
Geng Baochang, ed., Gugong Bowuyuan cang
Ming chu qinghua ci [Early Ming blue and white
porcelain in the Palace Museum], Beijing, 2002,
vol. 1, pl. 76. Two meiping of this design are also
preserved in the National Palace Museum, Taipei,
illustrated in Minji meihin zuroku [Illustrated
catalogue of important Ming porcelains], Tokyo,
1977-1978, vol. 1, pls 12 and 39. Slightly varying in
proportion and composition, these two examples
are attributed to different reigns; the first, with its
fruit sprays more sparsely arranged, is attributed
to the Yongle period, while the other, with a cover
painted with lingzhi, is attributed to the Xuande
period.
Meiping vessels of this design and size were
cherished not only by the imperial court in China
but also by royal families in the Middle East.
The Ottoman Royal collection had a total of six
meiping of this design, two of them illustrated in
Regina Krahl, Chinese Ceramics in the Topkapi
Saray Museum, Istanbul, ed. John Ayers, London,
1986, vol. 2, no. 624. Four others from the Safavid
Royal collection preserved in the Ardabil Shrine
in Iran are recorded and one of them is illustrated
in John Alexander Pope, Chinese Porcelains from
the Ardebil Shrine, Washington, D.C., 1956 (rev.
ed., London, 1981), pl. 51 top right.